


Outside Looking In

by GoneGravitas (AntiGravitas)



Category: Compilation of Final Fantasy VII, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VII
Genre: Gen, Ordinary Human POV, POV Outsider, SOLDIERS and SOLDIER Abilities
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-15
Updated: 2019-12-15
Packaged: 2021-02-26 08:02:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,373
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21809980
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AntiGravitas/pseuds/GoneGravitas
Summary: There’s a presence to him, a stillness that’s heavy on the air. He’s solid and patient and immovable, like some great beast with nowhere to go, and she stands staring at him in outright astonishment until the moment his eyes slide sideways to meet hers.Nowthoseare mako eyes.--------------What's it like to live and work in a world where SOLDIERs exist? To an ordinary human, SOLDIERS are awe-inspiring, and sometimes just a little bit unnerving. Even the nicest of them.
Comments: 12
Kudos: 53
Collections: FF7 Secret Santa 2019





	Outside Looking In

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pt_tucker](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pt_tucker/gifts).



> Happy holidays, I hope this ticks some of the boxes you wanted. :]

“And I almost had him!” 

The man is large, bigger than her brother, nearly as big as Jodrel from down the road, the man with the tattoos. The ones that cover both his arms and which flow all the way up his neck right to the very base of his jaw. The ones that her mother tells her not to stare at. As tall as him probably, but not as big across the shoulders. Big enough anyway. He’s looking down at her now from the corner of his eye, a grin on his lips like he’s testing her. Jodrell does not look at her like that. Jodrell just smiles and carries on about what he's doing, and sometimes he stands and stares when people approach her, and then they go away without speaking to her.

“Do you believe me?” this man asks, and in the background she hears her mother shift in her seat. This is the game they have to play, at least that’s what her mother says, although she doesn’t call it a game, she calls it _manners._ But Lucia thinks of it as a game because she doesn’t see why they should be polite to this man in their house when he turns up loud and _obnoxious_ and demands attention and space.

“No,” she says.

He laughs, which infuriates her to the core of her six year old self, and her mother makes that silly tittering sound that means _there will be words later, young lady._

“The great General Sephiroth - who’d have thought he’d be so bad at chess, am I right? Even a Third Class like me could beat him!” 

“You’re not a SOLDIER!” Lucia tells him disdainfully. “You don’t have the _eyes._ ”

Everyone knows that real SOLDIERS have the glowing eyes, bright green and bright blue like glass marbles when the sun shines through them. This man has grey eyes and they don’t glow. They’re pale and washed-out, and Lucia thinks they’re ugly. 

The man, the SOLDIER Third Class, third-rate, intruder in her home - he leans down with a creak of leather and he smiles.

“Not yet,” he says, and although he’s not threatening her Lucia feels a chill go through her. It’s nothing to do with the size of him or the gentle teasing of his tone. _Not yet,_ she thinks, and then, _not ever._

She is, although she’s far too young right now to know it, entirely correct.

  
  


*

It rains the day Lucia starts work. The Shinra tower looms amidst a haze of mist, its spotlights piercing the gloom and making the undersides of the clouds flicker weirdly. 

An older woman called Cath shows her around the floor where she’ll be working. It takes five minutes in a relatively clear lift to get from the ground floor to this one, just under a minute and a half if there’s no-one getting on or off in between, and, as she had discovered this morning, just under ten minutes if it’s busy. She’d been late by five minutes because a rangy, sneering red-head had hung half-in, half-out of the lift for several minutes to hold a shouted conversation with someone out of sight. No-one else in the lift had said anything to him, in fact no-one had even looked at him, and so Lucia hadn’t dared to either.

Eventually he'd stepped back and the doors had closed, trapping them all in the lift with him. Lucia hadn't been entirely sure what had given the man his aura of threat, but it had been something to do with the way he simply _hadn't cared_ , and a lot to do with the way everyone else had carefully let him do exactly as he pleased. He hadn’t gotten out at her floor, but carried on further up, and he’d reeked of cigarette smoke and cheap alcohol. The whole ride he'd stood there, jiggling his leg and his keys in his pocket and whistling something flat and off-key. She hopes she’s not going to be meeting him in the elevator every day.

Floor 51 is where the Director of SOLDIER has his offices, and Lucia is to be the secretary of his secretary’s assistant. It doesn’t sound like much, in fact it sounds faintly ridiculous, but now she’s been shown around and had her initial duties explained, she’s starting to get a true idea of why that kind of hierarchy might be necessary. There are four other girls in her team and one boy, who, to her eyes, looks more like a fourteen year old than the sixteen she and the others are. All of them are to file and copy, pass messages, run errands, make tea and take notes, for anyone and everyone that might need them. And at the end of it, one of them will be hired for a permanent position. 

Lucia is determined that it will be her.

She meets her first SOLDIER First Class during the introductory tour. At sixteen Lucia has seen SOLDIERs around town, with their swagger and their boisterous laughter. In the streets and sometimes in the bars, though not that often. They’re handsome and dangerous, and she knows exactly who this one is because she’s seen him looking out at her from recruitment posters for the last three years. 

Angeal Hewley. 

He’s standing outside the Director’s office, waiting patiently, arms folded, gaze distant, and there is something so _different_ about him that it stops her cold. To look at he’s nothing much. Handsome, but a bit too old for her tastes. Dressed like any SOLDIER in that muted blue-grey uniform of theirs, standing unobtrusively, your eyes could pass over him, except-

Except there’s a presence to him, a stillness that’s heavy on the air. He’s solid and patient and immovable, like some great beast with nowhere to go, and she stands staring at him in outright astonishment until the moment his eyes slide sideways to meet hers.

Now _those_ are mako eyes. 

It’s not until the older secretary has called her name a second time that Lucia responds, and then it’s partially an act of self-defence, an excuse to break eye-contact with that startlingly inhuman gaze. It’s only once Cath is leading them away that she notices the other SOLDIER wandering around next to Hewley. He’s smaller - shorter, less broad across the chest, lacking the sheer bulk of upper body musculature of the man he’s pestering. And pestering is a good word for what he’s doing, with his jerking around and attempts to get the older man’s attention. From the brief glance she has of him he doesn’t appear to be having too much success.

 _Cute, but annoying,_ Lucia thinks before the secretary leads her away through the cubicles. 

  
  


*

  
  


The others talk about Zack like he’s hot but stupid. He has a reputation for following Angeal around like a faithful puppy, always jumping up to entertain or to try for a pat on the head. Privately, Lucia understands it. She’s been at Shinra for six months now and she’s seen more of how the company works. If you want to get anywhere here you have to know the right people, or be willing to do things that aren’t particularly great. Sometimes both. 

And of course there’s the fact that Angeal is far more interesting than she’d at first thought. 

She’s met them all now - Angeal, Genesis, and finally Sephiroth. Where Angeal is brooding and quiet, Genesis is fast and intelligent, witty and confidant. He doesn’t look around at the secretaries when he passes through the offices, but he knows they’re all watching him. It’s an act, Lucia thinks, a never-ending play being put on for all of them to watch. He _is_ beautiful though, so does it really matter if he’s arrogant? 

And then there’s Sephiroth. He comes through the offices like a cold wind, the type that makes you look up to find out why it’s suddenly so chilly, and by the time you realise it’s him he’s already past you and away. Lucia is afraid of Sephiroth. _All_ of the secretarial staff are afraid of Sephiroth. He is undeniably beautiful. But he is also intense and overwhelming, and being looked at by him is like being pinned down for dissection, as though the SOLDIER part of his brain never switches off, like he’s always analysing, always looking for the tactical advantage. 

He’d asked her once where Director Lazard was and she’d been so taken aback to be spoken to that her mind had gone completely blank. His gentle, polite tone had snapped her out of her stupor, more because it was so entirely unexpected than because it had been anywhere near to soothing, and she’d sent him on his way informed as best she could of her boss’s schedule. His eyes though. She’d thought Angeal’s eyes to be mako eyes, but Sephiroth’s are positively otherworldly. So far into strange that beautiful and unnerving become the same thing. 

And that brings her back to Angeal. The quiet one. Silent and watchful, distant and polite. Always with the puppy at his heels, surrounded by the bark of Zack’s laughter and the energy of his antics. Lucia watches Angeal pass through the offices on his way to meet with the Director and she thinks how muted he is, how careful. Like every move he makes runs the risk of being too much, a man wary of his own strength. She could like a man like that.

Not the boy though, as she thinks of him. Zack is too young, too wild. The others say he’s pretty but an idiot, and Lucia thinks that’s not fair. But when she catches him playing football with a can and nearly hitting himself square in the face with it she thinks well, maybe a little fair.

One day a blushing guard cadet with ridiculous hair turns up at the security door to the main office. Lucia notices him hanging around at the entrance, unable to swipe himself in, and decides to take some form of pity on him. Keeping the door blocked with her body, she leans out and raises her eyebrows at him, secure in the knowledge that she is, for once, in the position of power. 

“Yes?”

It turns out that the puppy has apparently acquired a puppy of his own, one that’s so far down the Shinra hierarchy that he’s below even a secretary’s secretary’s personal assistant. Of course those who work on Floor 51 are by definition higher up the ranking than the grunt standing uncomfortably at the door. She can’t see too much of his face because he’s hiding it in the folds of his neck scarf, but she can tell that he’s young, perhaps younger than her even. 

His voice is muffled by his ridiculous scarf, but she manages to work out that he’s called Cloud and that he has a message for Zack. _Silly little boy to be so overwhelmed,_ she thinks to herself, as she watches him slink away back down the corridor. It’s surprising that he’s managed to get on to this floor in the first place - must have gotten off the elevator with someone else. She makes a mental note to report it to Cath, then types a quick mail to Zack Fair to tell him his friend has been looking for him.

 _Silly little boy,_ she thinks again as she clicks send.

  
  


*

  
  


The bar is smokey and dim, and Lucia checks her phone to see if Camille has messaged her yet. Still nothing and she wonders where her friend is. Always late to everything, it’s so annoying. The bar is an expensive one that’s only recently opened, and they’d agreed to meet here before heading on into the clubs further downtown. Lucia turns the stem of her glass between her fingers, angling herself away from the main part of the room in an attempt to indicate that her table is not up for sharing. She still has her coat on and her bag in her lap, and although it’s hot as hell it should make it look like she’s not intending to stay and therefore has no interest in company.

She feels it as much as sees it when Genesis walks in. The room pauses, every customer turning to look as one. He notices it of course, even from this distance she can see the slight curve to his lips as he strides to the bar. There’s something about him though, some indefinable presence that draws everyone’s attention as surely as had he slammed open the door and declared himself to the room with a shout. But Genesis Rhapsodos doesn’t need to do that, and every eye in the place follows him regardless. 

Lucia turns away again when she sees the first person start to slide over in the hopes of winning his attention. _Good luck_ , she thinks. _You’re going to regret it._ Lucia has already witnessed Genesis cut his admirers amongst the office staff down to humiliated size in less than two sentences. Sometimes she thinks they even enjoy it. She looks out the window instead, watching the street, trying to spot Camille. It takes a moment before she realises that the reflection in the glass is watching her, all mako burn eyes and artfully teased red hair. His attention makes her freeze, and for just a second she locks gazes with his mirror image, and then the door to the bar opens and the sounds of the street flood in.

Where Genesis can fill a bar, Sephiroth can clear one with his cold disinterest and lingering air of intimidation. He’s not even trying, Lucia knows that. Sometimes, having watched him pass through the offices enough times on his way to meet the Director, she thinks he doesn’t even realise he’s doing it. Following along in Sephiroth’s wake is Angeal, and the combined presence of all three SOLDIER First Class members is too much for the bar to bear. Excited conversation starts up and the passing of the crowds outside on the street has become a press of bodies as SOLDIER fans begin to gather in their heroes’ wake. It won’t take long before they all gain enough courage to come inside, and then the place will turn from quiet bar to unbearable crush.

At the bar Genesis has gotten to his feet and stands with open arms to welcome his two fellow SOLDIERS. He gets an arm around Angeal's shoulders, and holds out his glass to toast Sephiroth, and then he turns to the rest of the bar and begins to quote some passage that sounds a lot like something from _LOVELESS_ , that play she's not yet seen but which everyone says is amazing. People get up from their seats and start to gather round to listen, and the bar is filled with the flicker-flash of people taking photographs.

With a final glance at her phone, Lucia decides to wait outside.

  
  


*

  
  


She’s on her way to work when AVALANCHE attack. At least, the two young men that charge the front of the Shinra building waving flares and screaming anti-Shinra slogans are wearing the symbol of the insurgent group on their tabards. In the seconds she has to stare at them as they charge towards her up the steps to the front entrance she has time to think how young they look, how comically unprepared for what they’re attempting. Regardless of how they’re dressed, the one on the right has a primed grenade in his hand, and he tosses it upwards, the arc of it both faster and slower than she’d expect, and inexorably, unavoidably heading directly for her.

She doesn’t actually see what happens next, but the prickle across her skin and the sudden sharp scent of ozone reminds her of the smell of the SOLDIER training floor, the clash of magic and reality that’s the signature of materia. The air in front of her turns crystalline with magic, and the world turns bright, then a split-second later brighter still and shockingly full of a noise that’s the loudest sound she’s ever heard. It frightens her so much she ends up on her knees, and when she looks up again there’s a man in front of her, a solid wall of muscle and navy, and she has a heartbeat to meet the narrowed-eye gaze of Angeal, before he turns away and leaps. No man should be able to leap like that, so far, so fast, the sword in his hands half the width of the one on his back and yet still almost as wide as she is. 

Somewhere an alarm is blaring, and people are shouting in the futile manner of the shocked and dazed, all noise and no action. _What a lot of fuss over two boys,_ she thinks to herself.

“Hey! Hey, Lucia, right?”

Someone is leaning down over her, their hand on her shoulder and he smells of leather and faintly of sweat, and the subtle sweet-bleach scent of mako. Blue eyes, astonishingly bright, and black hair carefully styled into slicked-back spikes. 

“Zack,” she says, and is surprised when she can’t hear her own voice. “I can’t-”

“Don’t worry, I’ve got you. Ah, I’m just going to, two seconds - hold still, this’ll just tingle a little bit, all right?”

She’s seen healing materia used in Shinra’s medical insurance adverts, and the awful drama series that have sprung up in the last few years about handsome SOLDIERS and the War in the West. In those it gives off a pleasant twinkling glow, but this, this feels like warmth and a summer day, like breathing in the clean air of the plains or the ocean, or-

“So, Lucia? You with me? Yeah?”

She looks into his eyes, at the smile that lifts the corner of his mouth and makes him look kind, and she thinks, _you are handsome really, aren’t you?_

“I’m here,” she says, and the memory of summer fades, but she can hear again. Hear enough to understand the voices of the Shinra medics arriving now to kneel down beside her, bringing out a stretcher to put her on. Men and women are flashing by on either side, the heavy boots of the guard and the faster, less human speed of nearby SOLDIERs joining the hunt and Lucia thinks _those boys are dead already._

Zack pushes to his feet as the medics close in around her, walking backwards, until with a flick of his fingers in a jaunty salute he turns and follows the others into the streets, and she is left wondering _when did he grow up?_

  
  


*

  
  


It’s cold in the mountains, no matter if the sun is shining. Now with the afternoon already faded into evening and the stars coming out above, the air has turned icy, with sharp claws of cold that pierce even her thick-knit woollen scarf. A life-long inhabitant of the temperate climes around Midgar, Lucia had been shocked and somewhat put off by the extremes of temperature in the Nibel Mountains. Despite that there’s a beauty to the place that’s breathtaking and just a little humbling all at once. 

Out here there’s no busy nightlife, no endless selection of bars and cocktails and places to buy a nice outfit for work. Getting things she wants or prefers means waiting for her vacation days and going into Midgar to stock up on everything the mountains don’t offer, be it Shiki Beauty foundation, Polar beer or even the specific own brand chicken noodles the store on Marlone Street does. She has three big boxes of those, twenty-four packets a box and it’s way too many but really, Midgar’s such a long way and getting there is a hassle and she doesn’t _only_ eat chicken noodles but she does like them and- there’s nothing to complain about really.

Five years she’s worked for Shinra. She’s a personal assistant now, working for one of the Science Division middle managers, and it might not sound like much and it’s a sideways step from where she was, but _she’s_ the decision maker for her admin team now and only people who’ve accrued enough responsibilities and trust are even allowed to be here. New Nibelheim is only for people that Shinra can rely on, that the Company can trust to have its best interests at heart, to understand the need for things to be the way they are. New Nibelheim is the perfect example of a project that needs all the care and delicacy that only truly dedicated people can offer. Except it’s not New Nibelheim, is it? It’s just plain old Nibelheim. 

Some of the staff say that you can still smell the smoke from the fire, but that’s the type of talk that gets people in trouble, so she stays away from those conversations. As she makes her way back through the middle of town and up towards the mansion she checks again, breathing deep. The air is cold enough to make her lungs hurt but there’s no smoke there. Fresh paint, the scent of baking from somewhere, and the smell of wet grass but nothing that speaks to the past of this place. Everything’s perfect, everything is as it should be.

She reaches the gates to the Shinra mansion just as a figure emerges from around the gatepost. Two figures she realises as she draws up short to avoid walking straight into the both of them. In the silence of the deserted road, as the the town further down the slope settles in for the night, there is no-one around but her and the two men. 

Really, she ought to have smelled them coming. The air around them, even brittle with cold as it is, is drenched in the scent of mako. It seeps from their clothes with every shift of their bodies, billowing out from between them as the taller man hauls his companion upright in a wave so thick it should almost be visible.

For a long moment they stare at one another in shock. At least, shock is what Lucia feels. The man standing before her has been dead for five years, killed in action during the uprising of the townsfolk that had lead to the near destruction of the local reactor and the assassination of Sephiroth and his team. That’s the truth, she knows it. She, as one of Shinra’s most trusted employees, is one of the few to know the true story of what went on up here. The public can’t be allowed to know how terrible a blow the Company was dealt by the accidental success of an amateur uprising. 

Zack Fair does not look dead. He looks calm and watchful, supremely confidant of himself in the way that only a SOLDER First Class ever can be. It’s the serene self-confidence of the truly skilled, and with a shock she realises that he reminds her of Angeal. His eyes, in the shadowed gloom at the base of the high wall, glow a brighter blue than she remembers them ever doing back in the neon streets of Midgar. 

_Zack,_ she wants to say. _Zack, what the hells are you doing out here?_ But she doesn’t, because something is not right, and it’s far beyond the presence of a man that should have been dead five years ago. He’s no ghost. The reek of mako on him would be enough to tell her that, even if the steaming of his breath on the air did not. 

He looks at her, and for a terrible second it’s the look in the eyes of Sephiroth, the warrior sizing up an opponent, measuring the threat and deciding the tactics needed to dispose of it. It freezes her in place more surely than even the ice of the mountain air. Then the look is gone, and there’s a warmth in his eyes, a twist of his mouth at the corner that pulls his lips up into that smile she remembers. So open, so very genuine.

“Hey,” he says. “Lucia, right?” 

The man he’s holding up shifts, head lolling and Lucia sees a mess of ridiculous spiky blond hair and she thinks _no. No, it can’t be._ And then the man’s head tilts drunkenly in her direction and the eyes that look past her into the distance burn with the unnatural glow of Shinra’s trademark brand. 

_Those are mako eyes,_ Lucia thinks wildly. 

“That’s-” _Silly little boy. Puppy’s puppy. Sky? Storm?_ She can’t remember. “Is he-?”

Zack shifts and glances down at the man draped over his arm. He smiles and it’s something tragic and horrible, a brave face that even she can see straight through. He is not okay. Neither of them are in any way okay.

“He’s fine,” Zack says. 

Lucia draws in a breath to tell him no, that’s a lie, and nothing here is right, but then Zack looks at her and he’s Zack Fair, tall and handsome and kind, but he’s a SOLDIER too, and right now he’s on business, and the words die in her throat. She swallows them away, and her mouth is dry. 

“Listen, Lucia, me and my friend? We’ve gotta go. We have-” he smiles, tilts his head and _winks_ at her, and she thinks _you arrogant bastard._ “-We have places to be.”

Nothing about any of this is right. Nothing makes sense. But she’s been living three years in a recreation of the past, a living ghost town haunting itself, and what is another actor added to the stage? She stares at him and in the shadows his eyes are so bright they can’t be anything close to human. Suddenly she realises how alone she is out here, how very far from home.

“Good luck,” she says, and steps aside.

With a jaunty little finger salute to her, he hoists his friend up more comfortably, and sets off slowly down the path. She stands in the gateway and watches them until they’re out of sight, until her feet are frozen in the stillness and somewhere inside the mansion an alarm starts to blare. And then, as the pounding of booted feet and the ricochet of bullets echoes back up from the town below, she turns and makes her way inside.


End file.
